"Yoo bro...one sec dude, my moms callin'........Witam matki, jem teraz."

While entering Jr. High, among the many new friends I made, I met one kid who eventually came to be one of my very good friends entering High school. When I first met this kid I thought he had the coolest nickname, in fact I didn't know his real first name for while even after I was friends with him. I found out that the name everyone called him by was really his last name. I found this so interesting because I had never heard of a last name like that. When I first went to his house I figured out why it sounded so alien to me. He was Polish. Not like the people who say their half Polish and half Russian just because their great-great grandparents immigrated to America from foreign lands, but like his direct parents came here from Poland. When I first went into his house I witnessed a kid that spoke perfect English, talked just like me, speak in a completely foreign tongue, in perfect fluent Polish, to his parents. I almost found it humorous, this kid that was not a nerd, joked with the same immature humor as me and my friends, was bi-lingual. I was so fascinated by it. The first couple times my friends and I went to his house though, we felt a little uncomfortable. We were always taught that saying please and thank you were polite, but whenever we thanked his mom for something or said please she would give us a weird look. My friend would always laugh and tell me that his mom has no problem cooking or having us over so why would we add please or thank you, It wasn't like she was doing us a favor. It took getting used to, it was so different from how I was raised. What I went through is commonly known as "Culture Shock" in which, someone experiences a culture that is extremely different from there own. People have numerous different reactions to Culture Shock. Some may feel very awkward or uncomfortable, some may feel scared or anxious, and some may be fascinated in the uniqueness of the culture. It is important to incorporate Sociological Mindfulness into Culture Shock, to accept that your norm isn't the universal norm. A lot of the reason there is discrimination and racism, is because people are scared to accept this.